Wait, what? I know what these theories are. And still; what?

Hydrogenic atom chocolate cookies with Legendre polynomial chocolate chips. I bake things for my undergrad class to give them energy when we have a particularly maths-heavy lecture. Photo taken yesterday *after* the ~18 or so of them took one each.

Forbidden to-go drink

When in a place with moderate hills, find a moderate hill and run up it. (beamtime 10k from a few weeks ago)

Physicist top tip: set your thermostat to make room temperature calculations easier to work out 👍

Beautiful RIXS study. Last author, Valentina Bisogni, will give an invited talk at our iWOE meeting in two weeks' time! (maybe not about this paper though... )

Today I taught my last class of summer. The students at the Cook County Jail were outstanding. The county jail has a bad reputation but the education program here is doing a lot of good work with people who really want to learn. If you're an educator in the Chicago area pls consider volunteering!

Today begins year 2 of my tenure-track position. More senior colleagues have told me "don't worry, second year is so much better than first year". But honestly, the first year was wonderful, successful, and every day reaffirmed that I made the right career choice. Can second year be even better?

Beautiful August evening at the only (?) top 10 University with a beach

I guess my lab hot take is that tweezers shouldn't be consumables

Gotta resist that European urge to give my NSF Career proposal a snappy acronym... ERC Advanced Grants are announced, so here's my announcement of my favourite acronym. This year it's CATNIP: Citizen Attitudes Towards National and International Problems. Congrats to all awardees europa.eu/!JYKxkD

It was recently Oliver's 11th birthday. So here he is enjoying sashimi (yellowfin and roe). I adopted him when he was a kitten, at the start of my PhD. Now he's lived with me in three countries and two US states. What will the next 11 years bring!

From his Wikipedia "Von Ahn has used a number of unusual techniques in his teaching, which have won him multiple teaching awards at Carnegie Mellon University." I suspect he didn't just have the students at CMU sit in front of an AI 😐

This past week I got five free meals as part of work. Sometimes students ask me why I wanted to do this job. The truth is that I just kept getting free food. I've basically been domesticated by academia.

I have the opposite experience. I am surprised at how smart students are, some of them are super sharp thinkers. I also definitely had some homework questions in Physics of Materials that ChatGPT could have answered but students clearly weren't using AI 'cause they were getting it wrong lol.

Sample #00001 is grown!

I recently had dinner with faculty from another University and they did nothing but complain about their undergrads. Even saying "if any apply to your grad program, don't take them". Meanwhile, a decent portion of our department's group chat is gushing about how awesome our undergrads are 🤷🏻‍♀️

3️⃣ weeks to submit your abstract for QUOROM-12! Come be part of the vibrant quantum oxides community! Learn more, register for free, prepare your abstract: quoromvirtualconference.wordpress.com

Today I went to the McMaster-Carr main warehouse to pick up an order that couldn't wait. After years of ordering from their online catalog it felt like a pilgrimage to go there in person.

Just learned my cryostat will be a few months late. But at least I got this USB-chargeable, LED-decorated, handheld fan from them to make up for it.

This just happened. If you know, you know. If you don't know, well, this image just means that my lab set up is progressing nicely!

In 2017 a respected professor told me (a student, presenting a poster on engineering superconductivity in nickelates) "I can't believe you're still trying this, when are you going to give up!"

One of the things keeping me busy lately: The International Workshop on Oxide Electronics goes to Canada for the first time! Stay tuned for the website, other information, and abstract submission. Coming soon!

First group outing to do pub trivia. On an unrelated note, I'll soon be advertising a position in the group for an expert on American sports.

Nobody prepared me for how cool group meetings are. You mean I get to sit in a room of smart people, of my choosing, and ask them to tell me about any topic I like? Amazing.

There's both a Philz and a Peet's in Evanston. 1) is Evanston the only town outside of the Bay Area with both? 2) does that make Coupa Cafe the true local coffee place in the Bay Area? Mildly interesting.

Happy New Year! I’m looking for a postdoc to join our new lab at UC Berkeley starting in summer 2025 (flexible). We are building Hybrid quantum systems based on neutral atoms platform with nanophotonics and superconducting circuits. ⚛️⚡️❄️ suleymanzadelab.com

From moving in back in August to today. I don't even want to think about how many hours I've spent in this room but at least I made it comfortable. And yes that is the 4k Crackling Fireplace Birchwood edition up on the TV.

1/2 Submitted the grades on Monday and spent today polishing and re-organizing the notes that I've been adding to all quarter so that they're ready for next September. This class is to introduce quantum and solid state physics to MSE juniors for the first time.

Students, please, I am begging you: take advantage of office hours next semester. Go see your professors. They are just sitting there waiting for you and your classmates to stop by. They want to help you. You are not bothering them. Office hours is part of the class. Use this resource.

Oliver enjoying the earliest sunset of the year, which, at Chicago's latitude, was today. After hanging out with my cat, my second favourite activity is seeing people's faces when they find out the earliest sunset isn't on the winter solstice ;)

Tomorrow morning is my invited talk at MRS Fall @materials-mrs.bsky.social Stop by if you like neutron and x-ray scattering and/or oxide heterostructures

Very niche topic that I actually want to talk about presented in a meme to celebrate the weekend

With no leaves on the trees there's a direct line of sight from my office to my lab. Maybe if I get a telescope I'll be able to read the pressure gauges from my desk.

I think my only regret with taking a job in a materials science department rather than a physics department is that I'll never get a chance to teach classical mechanics :')

One must blend in (with the furnishings) to survive (the first quarter of teaching).